The Consequences of Poor Acting
by Winged Quill
Summary: Molly can't watch John struggle any longer, and reveals Sherlock's secret. Sebastian Moran is not an idiot. So when John suddenly starts acting cheerful again, he knows that something is up. And he wants revenge on the man who killed his boss. Slow, sweet, and drawn out revenge.


Written for a prompt over on tumblr. Warnings for mentions of suicide and torture. Slight crossover with Cabin Pressure, keeping with my headcanon that Sherlock disguises himself as Martin. Knowledge of Cabin Pressure is not necessary to read this story, though, so I did not put it in the crossover category. Enjoy!

* * *

John was slowly tearing himself to shreds and Molly didn't know what to do. The warning that Sherlock had given her before running a hand through his newly-ginger hair and running out the door was bouncing around inside her skull, making a painful and dissonant chord with the guilt that festered in her stomach like worms in an untreated wound. _Don't tell anyone the truth. They'll come after me if you do._

He hadn't said who they was, or what they would do to him if they found him, but she knew that nothing good would come of it. And yet every time she saw John limping around with a cane in his hand only furthered the reminder that she could take his pain away with three little words. _Sherlock is alive. _The sentence was constantly on the tip of her tongue, and she would shout and sing it to the world if she could.

And then one day, about a month after Sherlock's death, on a ordinary summer's day, Molly got a phone call.

"Hello?" she asked, pressing her mobile to her ear with one hand as she rummaged about in her purse with the other.

"Molly dear, I need your help." Mrs. Hudson's voice spoke from the other end, worry and anxiety seeping through the cracks. "It's John. He's locked himself up in his room and is refusing to come out...I don't know who else to call..."

"I'll be right over," Molly said, finally locating her wallet and putting ten pounds in her pocket to pay the cabbie quickly.

"Hurry dear. Please. John has a bottle of pills to help with his nightmares, and I'm scared about what he's going to do with them."

Molly's heart leapt into her throat and she almost dropped the phone, before catching it and speaking with a shaky voice.

"Stay outside his door. Keep talking to him. Stay with him, just stay with him."

Molly knew then that she had to tell him. Otherwise she would be responsible not only for one death, but for two. She had no doubt that if John killed himself, then Sherlock wouldn't be very far behind.

She could only pray that the mysterious they wouldn't find out the truth.

She spent the entire cab ride to Baker Street in a state of nervous agitation, fiddling with her purse, with the seatbelt, with the tips of her hair. The driver sent her a series of nervous glances via the review mirror, and without her even asking, increased his speed as much as he was able. She gave him the money in her pocket and told him to keep the change.

Clutching the handle of her purse so tightly that her knuckles went white, Molly stepped out of the cab and onto the pavement, stumbling slightly on the curb, before catching herself and walking to 221B as fast as she could. She flung the door open without knocking and dashed up the flight of stairs, legs churning and breath coming in gasps as she threw herself up them two at a time.

She whipped around the landing and continued upwards to the second floor of the small flat, where she knew John's room was located. Dithering outside his door and calling through to him was Mrs. Hudson, every line of her face etched in worry.

"John?" Molly called, not even granting the elderly woman so much as a hello. John's life was at stake, there was no time for such formalities. Fortunately, Mrs. Hudson seemed to understand, and stood aside to hover next to Molly.

"Molly?" asked a voice that was croaky with unshed tears. "Is that you?"

The feeling that she was doing the right thing only heightened when she heard how completely broken John was.

"John, I'm not going to dance around this." She took a deep breath. "Sherlock's alive."

There was a brief pause, and then an exhausted and bitter laugh came back to her. "Right. Thanks. Listen, I appreciate that you are trying to talk me down, but..."

"I am not fooling around. I am not lying to you. He is very much alive, and he _will _come home to you. But if you...if you take those pills John...I guarantee that he will follow you." Another long pause, and Molly swallowed her reservations, and said something that she hoped she wouldn't regret. "His death would be on your conscience."

She dearly hoped that she wasn't harming more than she was helping, and for a moment, she waited with baited breath to hear the goodbye, followed by a thump as John's body crashed to the ground.

But, thank god, none of that happened. Instead there was the jiggling sound of a lock turning and the door swung open, revealing John–leaning heavily on his cane, face all hard corners and worry lines, clothes scraggly and hair unkempt–and with a faint look of hope in his eyes.

"Tell me everything."

* * *

Sebastian Moran was many things, and most of them were less than savory. But he certainly wasn't an idiot. You didn't become the right-hand man of the greatest criminal mastermind in the world without having some measure of wit about you. So when John Watson, who had been all doom and gloom for a month, suddenly stopped using his cane and got a look of hope in his eyes, Sebastian knew that something was up.

Most likely that something had to do with the rising death toll among Moriarty's web. Putting those two things together was stirring an uneasy theory in Sebastian's brain, a theory that Sherlock Holmes–the man who had murdered his boss and friend–was still alive. And that theory made him angry.

Now, different people had different ways of coping with anger. Some went running to let off steam, some wrote angsty poetry, some took their fury out on any breakable objects within a ten-foot radius. When Sebastian Moran got angry, he killed people. The angrier he got, the longer he drew out their death, and the less the person looked like a person when he was finally through with them. Killing his boss and not even having the grace to die himself? Holmes was going to be a bloody twitching pulp when Moran was done with him. He would beg for the mercy of a killing blow.

And Sebastian had no intention of granting it for quite some time.

But of course, first there was the matter of actually locating the bastard. Which meant sending his best IT guys pawing through the records looking for any discrepancies. Any people whose pasts seemed a little too forced, a little too construed. Six names were presented to him within an hour.

Elizabeth Addison, Dean, Jimmy, and Samuel Colt, Doctor John Smith, and Captain Martin Creiff.

The first, he threw aside within a second of glancing at the photo (although she did look a bit like on of his boss' old contacts, must investigate that later.) The second and third were grinning broadly from a wedding photo, the fourth standing off to the side with a warm smile on his face as he watched the couple. The fifth had the fashion sense of a twelve-year-old in his grandfather's clothing. But the sixth...

Slouching a bit in clothes too big for him, a cap with far too much gold trim perched jauntily on his ginger curls, a shy smile on his face as he crossed his arms over his chest, as though protecting himself from the camera.

But there was no mistaking the face of his boss' arch-nemesis, and Sherlock Holmes was the one who was gazing nervously out of the photograph snatched from the homepage of a small charter company. _Perfect, _though Sebastian to himself as he skimmed over the records that indicated exactly where Martin Creiff lived.

With a flick of his wrist Sebastian summoned his strongest and most capable men, armed with syringes of sedative and clothes soaked with chloroform, big burlap bags and coarse, thick ropes. This wasn't some quick in-and-out assassination. No. Sherlock Holmes was going to suffer, was going to bleed and bleed and scream until he had no voice left and Sebastian left him, dead and alone on the basement floor of the lovely little house he had picked out for just this occasion.

He thought he might be going slightly mad.

Holmes lived alone in the attic of a student house, and it was only the matter of waiting until it was night, and entirely empty but for him (a task which was quite easy in the summer) before storming up the stairs and bursting into his room.

He stood in its center, one hand clutched tightly around a knife, the other clenched into a fist. The timid man from the website was no more, and any doubts that Sebastian may have had were wiped from his mind the instant he lay eyes on him.

"You should have trained your little pet to be a better actor," said Sebastian with a grin. "Get him," he said, and his men leapt on Holmes like wolves on a injured deer.

Holmes drew only a meager amount of blood before he was bound, gagged, and drugged on the attic floor, fighting against the ropes with the last bits of strength he had left.

There was fear in his eyes, no matter how much he tried to battle it down. He knew what was coming, had deduced it, knew that if Sebastian had just wanted him dead, he already would be.

"Your death is coming, Mr. Holmes," gloated Sebastian as one of his men forced a bag over the man's head and slung him over his shoulders like a burlap sack. "In time."

* * *

Sherlock Holmes died a week later, when Sebastian finally grew bored of him. Bored of the fact that he no longer made acidic comments (how could he? Sebastian had ripped out his tongue sometime on the third day) that he had long stopped scratching and biting (no fingers or teeth to do that with) and gazed around the room with empty eyes (quite literally–Sebastian thought his eyeballs were somewhere along the far wall, but it was hard to say amongst all the gore.)

He whimpered and moaned, quivering all over, and stopped fighting, stopped struggling. He accepted his fate, even welcomed it. He no longer had the will to live. Not in a world of pure pain where he couldn't see or speak.

When Sebastian finally stabbed his knife through Holmes' neck, the sound that he made was unquestionably one of relief.

The police found the body three days after Sebastian had left the room, matched it with the DNA of one Martin Creiff, reported missing, and switched the case from a missing person to a homicide. They never found his killer, of course.

MJN air went under soon after that, not able to cope financially or emotionally with the brutal loss of their captain. Carolyn tried to shield Arthur from what had really happened to Martin, of course. Douglas and Hercules kept it a secret as well. But he eventually found a newspaper, emblazoned with the bloody and graphic photographs, and Carolyn had discovered him curled up in a ball on his bedroom floor, sobbing. Martin's murder had managed to do to Arthur what the rest of the world could not–make the eternal optimist jaded.

They had him cremated, taking his ashes to the sky on G-ERTI's last flight, and letting him scatter away in the sky, free to fly as he had always dreamed of. It didn't seem right to put his damaged and broken body into the earth. Though they did have a tombstone put up in the graveyard, so they'd have something tangible to remember him by.

* * *

John prepared two cups of tea, humming merrily to himself as he did so. He carried them into the living room, setting one on the coffee table in front of the sofa, and carrying the other over to his armchair.

He settled down, gazed at the empty chair across from him with a smile on his lips, and waited for his friend to come home.

* * *

I really need to stop killing Sherlock in my stories, this is getting out of hand... May do a second chapter later, but no promises.


End file.
